David had missed teaching the karate class again-two days before-but told himself he was not to be denied his personal session with other black belts this night, Thursday.
It was one of those nights he needed right about now: rough-and-tumble on the mat, followed later by time with Kathy. A brief surcease from mounting questions. Both a decompression and a tune-up. He believed his mind had soaked up too much for one day and, although receiving the print evidence from Sparky was helpful, he sensed he was nowhere near solving the mysteries plaguing Hollings General over the past ten days.
And also plaguing David. Where were the snappy diagnoses of Medicine? The lucid paths to treatment and recovery? He had yet to make his first final diagnosis in this new world of detection.
On the climb to Bruno's studio at ten before five, he had a question for each step he took. Where is Spritz? Back in Cartagena? What about the drug connection? Has Kathy notified the Narcotics Unit?
Back to the print evidence. Who's to say the printing is Spritz's? The basis for comparison is the sign from the EMS office door. Couldn't Foster have put it there? Should printing samples be obtained from him? From Bernie? From Spritz's house? Or from Detective Chief Nick Medicore? He might want one from me! David puckered his brow as if everyone else's troubles had become his.
He reached his locker and sat with some relief, conscious of a sigh, receptive to the familiar gymnasium aroma that came down the hall like an invitation to follow where it led. He had time before the others arrived, so he made a slow ritual of changing into his judogi costume, then standing before the mirror attached to the end of the lockers. He adjusted and readjusted the black sash at his waist, gripped the carpet with his bare feet, and rotated his upper body from right to left several times. He stretched his head to his shoulder, a prizefighter awaiting the opening bell. He heard Bruno's tutorial voice next door.
David walked toward the main gym and, through the entrance to the beginners' room, saw a semicircle of young men standing at attention. Nine, he counted. They were clad in grey sweats. He recognized one of them, the one in the middle, the one with a swollen lip and purplish ear and wearing dark glasses: Robert Bugles.
Robert gave him a half-wave from waist level. David raised his hands in front, palms up, in a what's-going-on gesture. He had never interrupted a karate class before, but neither had Hollings General ever been racked with a string of murders, and anything or anyone connected to one of the victims could change his routine.
He waited for a natural break in Bruno's discourse and walked through the doorway.
"Excuse me," he said.
"David, you're here," Bruno replied. "Would you like to say a few words to the group?"
"No, no, that's okay. Sorry to interrupt, but I just have a message for Robert Bugles there. Could I see you after you finish?" David knew the beginners' sessions and his own ended at six. Robert nodded yes.
"Good, I'll be at my locker. Thanks, Bruno," David said, ducking out of the room.
As David sparred with his colleagues, he had difficulty focusing on his chop and punch blocks, on counter-attacks and on spin moves. To a degree, his size made up for lack of concentration, and it was not until he was clearly outmaneuvered midway in the session, that he willed himself to defer any distractions before he got hurt. He had particularly wondered about Robert's choice of a beginners' class. And also about what was in store for his brother, Bernie.
At six, David cooled down on the bench before his locker. Robert strolled in, breathing hard, glistening in sweat. He sat on an opposite bench and allowed his arms to plummet toward the floor.
"I guess I'm all right if I can do that out there," he said before taking a deep breath. He removed the dark glasses; his left eye was rimmed in black.
"I was going to say, you sure you're not pushing yourself? Hospitalized one day, a karate workout two days later?"
"Nah, just a little stiff."
David stood and slipped out of his uniform top. He mopped himself with a towel, having decided to delay a shower until after he had finished with Robert. "Mind if I ask you a question or two?" he said. "Nope. You want to take showers first?"
"Let's get this over with; it shouldn't take long. First, what on earth are you doing in with the beginners? I thought you were a `brown.'
"I am. But, see, it's been a long time. I'm going in with the intermediates tomorrow night. Bruno told me I could."
"How long has it been since you've been here? I mean, I remember seeing you back then, but it's kind of a blur. How long ago was it?"
"Two years."
David peered down at him. "You look in good shape. Which brings me to my next question. How can a brown belt like you not fend off an attack by his brother."
Robert wiped his chin with the back of his hand. "He caught me off guard with a sucker punch and I couldn't shake it off."
"And your being here doesn't mean you plan on retaliating, does it?"
"You mean `get even'?"
"Exactly."
"Nah. I'm just taking the advice you gave me in the hospital."
"You heard me, then."
"Yeah, I heard you. I also saw how that nurse broad looked at you." Robert shot a conspiratorial leer. "I thought your eyes were closed."
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends."
David pretended to straighten out the shelf in his locker as he said, "Let's get back to Bernie. Have you seen him since he was released?"
"Nope. Never saw him but we talked on the phone."
"You talked? Hmm … who called who?"
"He called me. He said he was sorry about what he did."
"Are you going to press charges?"
"Nah, he was probably right. I shouldn't of let you into dad's place."
"It would have been easy to get a search warrant, Robert."
"If that means the cops open up the place, then I wouldn't of gotten decked." His smile revealed a split in his swollen lip.
David didn't waste time on Robert's logic. "Do you know Victor Spritz?"
Robert lifted one leg to straddle the bench. "I guess so.
"You guess so?"
"I heard my brother talk about him."
"What did he say?"
"When?
"Any time."
"Oh … that he's a nice guy and all that. He never told me much. You know, he's older than me."
All the way home, David tried to understand his discoveries of the day. It was nightfall and he drove transfixed, never using a directional signal or his horn or his rearview mirror to check for frog's eyes, crawling along as if anticipating that his arrival home might sully his mind's hard drive. He was thus in no hurry and the weather helped: a thin rain had turned the roads to black ice.
That Spritz would pick out a rifle for killing and then return it to his collection bothered David. What was the dynamic there? Just plain hiding it among other guns, or was it the twisted reasoning of a psychotic shunned by the Army but now possessing his own military hardware? And what on earth do CARCAN and CANCAN mean? Screw "staying the course." He decided he would level with Kathy when she came over later. Get her input. Share the gravity of his findings. Hell, she's wondering what's been accomplished, anyway.
As the headlights of his Mercedes fell across his driveway, David cursed Fitzpatrick Snow Removal. Half-assed job. He noticed a faint outline of tire tracks as he pressed on the remote control and entered his attached one-car garage. Probably Fitzy's truck or maybe a delivery truck making a wrong turn. He was not concerned until he reached the breezeway and spotted light shining through the window of the rear bathroom. He whipped out his Minx and streaked to the left side of the door to the den. Hugging the wall, he tried the door; it was locked. He slipped in a key and, shrinking sideways, flicked the door with his fingers and allowed it to drift open. The light thud of the door on the inside wall sounded heavy in the silence-loud enough, he thought, to rouse any intruder occupied in the back of the house.
David clutched the semiautomatic with both hands and waited a few seconds. He tried to breathe only through his nose. He recalled once reading that armed cowboys never peeked around corners from a standing position. He squatted and, ignoring the pain in his knee, eased the Minx into the doorway. His head followed close behind.
He reached around and turned on the light. The first things that caught his eye were his desk and table drawers-every one had been pulled out. Most of them together with his considerable number of removable bookshelves lay on the floor like a pile of bricks and tiles. Scattered papers, slanted pictures, disturbed books, overturned lamps, puckered carpeting.
Infuriated, David dashed from room to room, flipping light switches, ready to shoot at anything that moved. Disarray, but not destruction, was everywhere. He found the bathroom light on. He checked his watch. It read six-forty and he deduced the visitor must have been there within the last two hours.
He ambled about-more leisurely now, but with Minx still drawn-stepping aside as he flung open closet doors. Convinced no one was in the house, he returned the gun to its rig and, circling around in the center of the living room, asked himself, "Who was looking for what?" It was a question he plucked from coals of agitation, because David was, first and foremost, inflamed over the violation of his personal space. He felt blood bubbling at his temples.
He thought of sitting but was too fired up for that. Instead, he hunched over and crossed his arms tightly on his chest like a tourniquet for the adrenaline surge he felt throughout his body. He was even annoyed over the tapping of his foot which seemed herky-jerky. Suddenly he stiffened upright. The basement!
David barreled down the stairs as he yanked out his Minx once again. Despite semidarkness, he knew exactly where to pull on the three light chains. There was no one there and his gun collection appeared intact.
Upstairs, he fixed himself a drink and considered straightening out the mess, but decided he wanted Kathy to see it. He sat at the kitchen table, sipping while he kneaded his left knee. His glass was empty when he reassured himself the intruder had never entered the basement, a pronouncement that helped him tolerate the break-in and subjugate its relevance vis-a-vis the question he had initially asked: "Who was looking for what?"
The doorbell rang once and David, looking through the archway, saw Kathy rubbing her hand over the front doorjamb. "Did you see this?" she asked, as he approached her.
"What?" he said before spotting the splintered gauge. "Uh-huh, of course. It's been jimmied." He absorbed Kathy's inquisitive expression and said, "I stopped exploring once I found my guns were safe."
Her expression deepened. "What's that mean?"
David backed up and waved his hand toward the rooms. "Voila," he said. Kathy's eyes widened. "David, my God!"
He pulled her to him and rested his chin on her head. "It looks worse than it is, Kath. Nothing's busted." He kissed her hair and said, "It'll look neat after a wine or two."
She removed her coat and threw it over a chair, then kicked off her galoshes and shoes in one piece.
"And I was complaining about the weather," she said, surveying the room. "Anything missing?"
"Not that I can tell, but I doubt it."
Kathy picked up several magazines and replaced them on the coffee table. "What do you think he was after?" she asked.
"I've got my ideas but come look around first."
Arm in arm, they sidled past strewn magazines and books and went into the kitchen where he poured drinks before leading her on a tour of the house.
Back in the living room, their sighs coalesced as they settled on the sofa, his legs in their usual position on the table, hers draped over his.
"No overturned furniture," she said, "notice?"
He didn't bother to look around. "And that's a clue of sorts," he said.
"A clue?"
"Sure," he said, already half through his second Canadian Club. "If psycho Spritz had been here, my guess is the place would have been destroyed. I'd be interested in the shrink's take on this. Besides, I just left Spritz's garage and his car is there. Not him but his car, which is another puzzle."
David put down his drink, repositioned her legs on his thighs and leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. "You know, Kath, if I smoked cigars, I'd blow a smoke ring right about now."
"I wouldn't let you smoke cigars."
David liked her catch of stubbornness. He sat forward and said, "That's not the point. What I mean is … "
"I know what you mean, Dr. Dramatic. Let's have out with the great unveiling."
David's expression hardened. "Well", he said, "I think the culprit here is Bernie Bugles and he had something specific in mind. Something about his father's records."
Kathy drew back and asked, "What records?"
"Okay, are you ready for all this, or shall I refill your glass first?" She had taken only one sip.
"My glass is fine, and what are you talking about?"
Without warning, engine noises sprung from the direction of the driveway, now gunning, now purring amidst a series of beeps. Kathy recoiled.
In two steps, David was at the window. "No problem," he said. "Fitzy and his plow are back. He must have felt guilty."
David returned and sat next to Kathy, extending his legs over the table again, and lifting hers atop his with one hand. He drained the last of his drink and then told her of Charlie Bugles' references to possible drug shipments; of Alton Foster's surgical training and Victor Spritz's hospitalization in Cartagena, Colombia; of the circumstances surrounding Robert Bugles' beating; of what he labeled "the motorcycle caper in Cannon Cemetery"; of the CARCAN and CANCAN enigmas; and of the arsenal in Victor Spritz's garage and the Japanese rifle that matched the slug found in Bugles' head. He felt short of breath, but he thought Kathy looked worse.
The racket outside continued like a background chorus as he identified the calling card in the envelope he had handed her two days before-the adhesive strip from the elevator control room-and mentioned the paper on his windshield and, nodding toward the front of the house, the stone that had been hurled his way.
"David, my God!" she cried, as the motor noises disappeared.
"You said that before. It's okay."
"Okay? Why hadn't you told me about the calling cards?"
He crunched down on an ice cube. "I didn't want you to worry."
"I worried anyway. But now I'm ticked." Kathy reached up and, grabbing his chin, twisted his head toward her. "Listen, darling," she said, "murders, drugs, threats. You sure you don't want out?"
"Are you kidding?" David replied, "I'm just warming up. And what's this `ticked' business?"
"I thought we'd be sharing evidence." Any tenderness in her voice was gone. He could tell she wanted him to elaborate on everything he had discovered at Bugles', at Foster's and at Spritz's.
"Kathy, my dear," he said, with a sarcastic firmness, "I just covered less than seventy-two hours. A big, important investigator like me can't be running to the cops every few hours."
"You're big," she fired back and looked as if she had already reloaded.
"Thanks a lot."
She pinched an ice cube from his glass to hers and said, "Let's get back to Spritz's garage. It was a gun collection?"
"That's no gun collection. It's a museum." David described the designations by wars, the flags, the music, the newspaper article, the Army rejection letter and the scrawl in the margin.
"The man's insane!" Kathy said.
David clapped his hands. "Bravo. That's why he was committed."
"He could have shot Coughlin-most likely he did-but that doesn't mean he butchered Bugles or pushed Tanarkle down the shaft." She had been running her fingers to-and-fro over the back of David's hand but then stopped. "In fact," she continued, "maybe we have two killers. Maybe Foster's the butcher. He had the training." "Possible. But, Spritz certainly had motives, opportunities and means, even without insanity."
"I can think of one motive. What else?"
David counted on his fingers. "First, the obvious: not getting the EMS contract renewed. Then, I don't know, something about the report in Foster's files. Not his medical history per se, but why get hospitalized in Cartagena? I mean, I've heard of psychiatric secrecy, but why Colombia, South America, for Christ's sake? No, it's got to be related to drugs. Cocaine. And, how about a tie-in with Charlie Bugles and his Istanbul roots?" He had begun reasoning out loud.
"Sure," he continued, "heroin and Istanbul. Cocaine and Cartagena." David massaged his decision scar while Kathy finished her wine but never took her eyes off him.
"Wait a minute!" David leaped up, sending her sprawling on the sofa like a marionette. "Let me think," he said. He snapped his fingers. "That's it!"
"What?" Kathy gathered herself and stood. She tugged on his arm. "What?"
"Cartagena. The `CAR' in `CARCAN.'"
"Say that again."
"The `CAR' in `CARCAN' could be short for Cartagena. Jesus!"
He ran to the den and, on his knees, foraged in a heap of books on the floor, tossing them aside until he reached an atlas near the bottom. Kathy knelt beside him.
"That means," he said, "if there's a connection between Spritz and Charlie Bugles, and if my hunch is right that the `CAR' refers to Cartagena, then maybe the first `CAN' in the second word refers to a city in Turkey."
"Sorry, you lost me."
David opened the atlas to a map of Turkey and took out a pen. "See?" he said, printing "CARCAN" and "CANCAN" in the margin. "This is what we're looking for." He circled the first three letters of the second word. Without waiting for a response, he ran his finger up and down the country, confining himself to the Istanbul region.
"Kathy, there! Bull's-eye! Wait. And there. Damn, there're two of them." She strained to read the names of the two cities he had checked with his pen. They were about two-hundred miles equidistant from Istanbul: Canakkale, on the western coast, across the Sea of Marmare, and Cankin, inland and to the east.
He wrote the cities on an index card which he folded into his wallet, dog-eared the page and closed the book."So conceivably," he said, as they arose, "the first part of each word represents a city, and the second part represents something else. But what?"
Kathy squared her body to his and said, "You're thinking `CAR' is an abbreviation for Cartagena and the first `CAN' an abbreviation for one of those Turkish cities?"
"Yep," David said, smugly.
"Hmm, and the second half of each word stands for something common to both? Like a code name?"
"That's one way of putting it. " He stroked his mustache. "Yeah, like a code name. I like that."
They had wandered back to the living room and Kathy sat on the sofa, pulling David down beside her. "But what if CANCAN is simply shorthand for both Turkish cities?" she asked.
As the possibility sunk in, David raised one eyebrow in a questioning slant and said, "C'mon, Kath, why go and complicate things?"